62326 



i 



UNIYERSITY OF MICHIGAN. 

PHILOSOPHICAL PAPERS. 



. First Series. No. 1. 



UHIYERSITY EDUCATIOH. 



.^^'' 



By G S."'Morris, Ph. D., 

Professor of Logic, Ethics axd the History of Philosophy. 



axn arbor: 
ANDREWS & WITHERBT, 



Monograph 



Gm 



V / . . ' 'r\ 



iytg '6 






UNIVERSITY EDUCATION. 



What, specifically, does a University exist for ? One 
answer to this question might be gathered from the follow- 
ing words of the founder of an American University, " I 
would found an institution where any person can find in- 
struction in any study." Another, coming to us as a pure, 
clear echo from the world of ancient Greece, is suggested 
by the following passage from Plato's Republic : 

" After this period, I continued, these choice charac- 
ters, selected from the ranks of the young men of twenty, 
must receive higher honours than the rest ; and the de- 
tached sciences in which they were educated as children 
must be brought within the compass of a single survey, to 
show the co-relation which exists between them, and the 
nature of real existence." 

From these words of the modern American and the 
ancient Greek, respectively, there might, I say, and no 
doubt ordinarily would, be inferred two very different 
ideals of that " higher education," of which — whatever it 
may be held to consist in — the University is on all hands 
held to be the instrument or the purveyor. According to 
the Platonic sense, the school or " academy " of Plato was 
itself a University, a University with but a single teacher, 
and that teacher none other than Plato himself. In a 
modern University, organized to enable " any person " to 

* A new version, almost wholly rewritten, of an address delivered at the 
founding of the Philosophical Society of the University of Michigan, to whose 
members it is now respectfully dedicated. 



2 UNIVERSITY EDUCATION. 

"lind instruction in any study," it might happen that 
PJato, brought to life again and installed as a professor, 
would be lost in the crowd of teachers, and that, being 
lost, he would be seriously missed by no one. According 
to the one ideal, the higher education would be a training, 
not primarily of the memory, but— after the memory had 
been already trained and stocked with detailed and exten- 
sive knowledge respecting particular facts and orders of 
fr^cts — of the comprehending intelligence, and this with re- 
lation to the highest goal of intelligence, the comprehen- 
sion of the " nature of real existence," the knowledge of 
ultimate truth, together with the power to detect, and the 
will to condemn, all essential shams and falsehoods. Ac- 
cording to the other, it would consist in absorbing and 
practically exclusive devotion to one or two out of an in- 
definite multitude of different lines of study and investi- 
gation, or in a more supercial cultivation of many of them, 
o-uided by the arbitrary bent or the subjective curiosity of 
the individual, or by the hope of a future private advan- 
tage, but without any regard to the problems of "real 
existence" and the application of ultimate truths to the 
development of character. Of these ideals, the one would 
have to be termed distinctly ethical ; the other would ap- 
pear to have no ethical character whatever. 'J'he one 
would summon the student to the highest and most abso- 
lute " courage of truth." The other might, apparently, be 
pursued in the midst of complete indifference to the nature 
of universal and ultimate truth, or even consistently with 
a profession of knowledge that no such truth can be known 
by man. The ideal suggested by Plato would be termed 
synthetic, and the other analytic. A University organized 
in accordance with the former ideal would have, for its 
natural motto, non muUa^ sed multum^ or, still better, 
multum apud multa. The maxim of its rival, following the 



UNIVERSITY EDUCATION. 3 

other ideal, would naturally be, simply, multa^ or a selec- 
tion from amon^ the multa^ in the shape of one or more 
"specialties" (a "major subject," for example, and one 
or more "minors.") 

Of the two ideals described, the one suggested by the 
ancient philosopher would be termed philosophical, and 
the other — according to the current use of this term — 
scientific. The former would make the completion of 
human culture, to which, supremely, as is obvious, the 
" higher education " should minister, to depend on follow- 
ing up the acquisition of a sufficient knowledge of the 
" detached sciences " with a comprehensive view of that 
harmonious totality which they must constitute and, above 
all, of that absolute world of " real existence " (including 
man himself) which they purport to reveal. The latter 
would encourage the student, as a student^ to ignore all 
but the most limited " views of totality " and to centre his 
ambition and energy mainly in the attainment of the most 
coinplete knowledge of the detailed facts of one or more 
" special sciences," and of their particular visible relations 
or "laws." 

It is certain, now, that in each of these ideals of 
higher education an element is insisted on, that really be- 
longs to the completed conception of such education. It 
ought, I think, to be admitted as equally certain, that 
either of them, taken by itself, and interpreted as exclu- 
sive of the other, is not merely defective, but fatally so. 
In other words, each of the elements mentioned is re- 
quired in order to render the conception of the higher 
education of man not only formally but substantially 
complete ; or, each is not merely desirable, but also essen- 
tial, as a factor of the higher culture, which every student 
should bear away with him from the University. 

Or, am I wrong in assuming that the supreme end of 



4 UNIVEKSITY EDUCATION. 

all education is humane culture — the perfected and 
rounded development, in each of its subjects, of essential 
manhood,— and that the like is supremely true of that 
higher and highest formal education, which it is the recog- 
nized function of Universities to provide for and direct ? 
And is it wrong for me to suppose that, among the obliga- 
tions which rest upon those who, as teachers, or otherwise, 
are called to take a directive part in the life and work of 
Universities, the supreme one is, to know, more fully, if 
possible, than all others, wherein the perfect education or 
culture of a human being consists, and, so far as in them 
lies, to see to it that the conditions necessary for its attain- 
ment are by themselves, as active guardians of the Uni- 
versity and of its student" patrons, ever vigorously main- 
tained ? 

There are abundant reasons why the problems sug- 
gested in the foregoing should receive attention among us 
at the present time. The chief of these is to be found in 
the circumstance that, especially within the last decade, 
and at a number of different centres, the higher education 
in this country has begun distinctly to take on a new and 
advanced form, and to be avowedly directed toward the 
realization of ideals, which are described as the form and 
the ideals of the " true University." Tlie true University, 
which is, by hypothesis, something other and more than a 
high school, college, or technical school, has in the past 
had no proper existence on American soil ; this is the 
truth which is now coming to be currently recognized and 
admitted. Along with this has come the consciousness or 
conviction that the times are ripe for something higher 
and better than the best that our educational institutions 
have in the past been able to oifer ; that the nation needs 
it ; that the higher practical exigencies of our American 
civilization demand it ; and that promising students, in 



UNIVERSITY EDUCATION. 5 

sufficient, and, indeed, rapidly growing, numbers, are ready 
to seek and receive it. To endow new foundations for 
meeting this need, millions have latterly been given. Old 
and strong foundations are gathering up their forces for 
the same end. Others, while distinctly checking the as- 
piration to occupy the new and higher field, are yet 
brought sensibly under the influence of enlarged ideals, 
and this influence extends with moulding eff"ect even to 
those schools which must always continue to occupy in- 
ferior grades, but from which the University must always 
continue to draw its living recruits. And not only is all 
this true, but also the important practical problems in- 
volved have been and are receiving earnest attention on 
the part of those, on whom most conspicuously and directly 
responsibility rests. Noble and, in my opinion, just views 
have been publicly expressed by them respecting these 
problems ; and my object can not be, and is not, to try to 
do better what has already been done so well, but only, 
or mainly, to emphasize and develop a little more fully a 
phase of the general subject, which I think particularly 
deserves such treatment. 

Let us look for a moment at the University, in its his- 
toric and intrinsic distinction from the College. 

Colleges first sprang up under the shadow of the 
mediaeval Universities. The latter, first founded, were 
devoted to the cultivation of the " universitas literarum et 
scientiarum " — or the total realm of the intelligent inter- 
ests of men. They were free and independent centres for 
the communication, by lectures, of the ripest thought and 
most advanced knowledge, which men of commanding 
ability had at their disposal. The attendance, of minds 
eager to assimilate the best wisdom of their times, speed- 
ily reached enormous proportions. Soon other Universi- 
ties were founded under the express patronage of the 



" UNIVERSITY EDUCATION. 

church; and when the students in attendance came to be 
numbered by thousands and tens of thousands, advantage 
was taken of the occasion to found " Colleges, i. e. board- 
ing-schools for poor students, in which lectures of a merely- 
mechanical nature were given, summae or extracts being 
dictated to the students to be learned by rote. Persons 
who had money were also admitted to these lectures on 
the payment of a certain fee, and so attention was di- 
verted, gradually, more and more from the public (or 
University) lectures."* So in time it came about that in 
England " the Colleges superseded the Universities," as, 
almost in our own day. Sir William Hamilton discovered 
to his great indignation and vexation. In Germany, on 
the contrary, the Colleges, as appendages of the Univer- 
sity, were early abandoned. But another independent 
and worthy place was found for them. They could not 
take the place of the Universities, but they could perform 
the highlv needful and honorable function of preparing 
students for the higher and freer studies of the Universi- 
ties. The mediaeval College idea bore a worthy and im- 
portant fruit in the German " Gymnasium." 

Whatever defects we may think it necessary to 
acknowledge in the German University, as actually or- 
ganized and conducted, it can not be denied that it repre- 
sents the completest result, to date, of the free and inde- 
pendent development of the orginal Universitj'- idea. The 
German University is a place for the freest, fullest, most 
unrestricted cultivation, communication, and acquisition of 
any and all knowledge, except, of course, that which is 
obtained only through actual and active connection with 
the practical affairs of life. It is a workshop both of uni- 
versal intelligence and of intelligence specialized almost 

*Brookhaus' Conversations-Lexikon, 11th ed., Art., " Universitaten." 



UNIVERSITY EDUCATION. i 

ad i?i^nitu7n as regards its subject-matter and direction. 
Within its walls are considered both the highest and most 
general and also the most special and humblest of the in- 
terests of human life which lend themselves to scientific 
treatment. There forces have been trained and developed, 
which have permeated, transformed and uplifted, not only 
the German nation, but also, measurably, the other nations 
of the civilized world. Through them, more than once, 
the German people have learned that greatest of all les- 
sons, the one without which all others are vain, the lesson 
of self-knowledge. It has learned, I say, in a large and 
deep measure, to know itself, and in learning this, to know 
" what it must will,"* and in fact to will and act accord- 
ingly. The spark, which kindled the spiritual fires of the 
reformation, was first struck at the University of Witten- 
berg. It was the Universities, according to the admission 
of one of the defeated, that conquered at Sadowa and 
Sedan. 

The forces marshalled in a University for the purpose 
of instruction and research are distributed, according to 
the traditional schema, into four faculties the faculties of 
theology, law, medicine, and philosophy. Of these, the 
first three are organized with special reference to the re- 
quirements of preparation for the following of one of the 
so-called "learned professions." The philosophical 
faculty alone has no such special aim, and represents, in 
the organism of the University, most fully and unquali- 
fiedly the fundamental idea of the University, the idea of 
the freest and most unrestricted pursuit and promulgation 
of any and all truth for its own sake alone. But it is not 
to be supposed that the faculties of theology, law and 
medicine exist in rigid independence of each other and of 



*It has been finely said of Frederic the Great, " Er weiss was er wollen 
muss." Trendelenburg, Kleine Schriften, I. 63. 



8 UNIVERSITY EDUCATION. 

the philosophical faculty. On the contrary, they are, 
ideally, offshoots or branches of the latter. In them the 
University idea is not lost, but simply specified, or partic- 
ularized. In true University faculties of law, theology, or 
medicine the special and limited truths, laws, and facts of 
these several departments of knowledge are not merely, 
though, for obvious practical reasons, they must be mainly, 
set forth in their special and limited character. The in- 
structor, or lecturer, maintains in himself the sense of 
their universal relations, or of their connection with the 
realm of all knowledge and of all reality ; and he carefully 
cultivates this sense in his pupils or hearers. Thus the 
special school, of whatever name, organized and conducted 
as a living member of a true University, exercises a liber- 
alizing influence and fits for a " liberal education " ; its 
students receive a liberal culture ; and by this sure mark 
upon their minds and characters its work is distinguished 
from the best that — unless by accident — is accomplished 
by a purely " technical school," i. e., by any special school 
organized by itself and without a close University connec- 
tion. 

Between this University ideal of human education and 
the life, work and organization of our American institu- 
tions for higher education it is a mild statement to say that 
there has been in the past a decided lack of correspon- 
dence. The semblance of a University — such has been 
the rule of the past — and the apparent right to appropriate 
the name of one have been secured only through the 
grouping together, in one place and under one board of 
formal control, of several professional and technical 
schools or faculties, along with a College and a College 
faculty. But the relation between the schools and the 
College has been mainly nominal and external. The Col- 
lege faculty has not been a " philosophical faculty," nor 



UNIVERSITY EDUCATION. 9 

has the College been qualified to function as the life-giv- 
ing centre and (to change the figure) the standard-bearer 
of a true University. And in England the state of things 
has been no better. 

The English and American College is a mixture and 
development of elements contained in the mediaeval 
"College or Boarding-school" and the German Gymna- 
sium. Says President Gilman, " The College implies, as a 
general rule, restriction rather than freedom ; tutorial 
rather than professional guidance; residence within ap- 
pointed bounds ; the chapel, the dining hall and the daily 
inspection. The College theoretically stands in loco 
parentis; it does not afi'ord a very wide scope ; it gives a 
liberal and substantial foundation on which the Univer- 
sity instruction may be wisely built." The College stu- 
dent is treated as being under discipline ; and the College 
instructor is a disciplinarian. To the former daily tasks 
are set, of which it is the function of the latter to exact 
the performance. Neither the one nor the other is free ; 
. the student is not, for obvious reasons ; and the freedom 
of the teacher is restricted, for the double reason that his 
work must, alwciys and necessarily, be in a very considera- 
ble measure mechanical and that, in proportion as it is 
sucn, more of it can be and is required of him. 

Of course, what I have said must be taken with such 
grains of salt as the case may seem to require. Its gen- 
eral truth is obvious enough. But there are Colleges and 
Colleges, as we all know, and among them are some, 
whose rapid growth and expansion, beyond the standards 
of earlier years, are a matter of common knowledge. It 
is two or three of the foremost of these that have begun to 
abandon, if not completely, at least largely or mainly, the 
restricted aims and conditions of the College and are 
rapidly adopting those of the University. The College 



10 UNIVERSITY EDUCATION. 

faculty is in process of becoming the philosophical faculty 
of a University. That " freedom of teaching and learn- 
ing," which the greatest Universities have proudly claimed 
as their choicest possession, is the ideal, which these Col- 
leges are seeking by their self-raetamorphosis to approach 
or realize. 

In addition to the old Colleges referred to, there is a 
limited number of institutions, of more recent founda- 
tion, which , adopting from the beginning the University 
name, have either with growing distinctness acknowledged 
and with constantly accelerated steps approximated 
toward the University ideal (as in the case of our own 
University), or (as in the single case of the Johns Hop- 
kins University, of Baltimore) have from the start ac- 
tually carried out, in some most important respects, the 
University idea, as had not previously been done in this 
country, and with a degree of success that has deservedly 
attracted unusual attention. 

It is plain that the problem of true University educa- 
tion is upon us, and that if any one has anything to say on 
questions like those formulated or suggested in the begin- 
ning of this paper, now is the time for him to speak. The 
University idea is not merely knocking loudly for admis- 
sion into and full recognition in the arrangements for the 
higher education in our country. It has already forced 
open the door. It is already entering, nay, has entered. 
It may be a welcome or an unwelcome guest; but it is 
here, and doubtless it has come to stay ; and it is time that 
any of us whom it concerns — and truly it concerns every 
thinking man — should consider how we will entertain it. 

It will, I think, subserve my purpose, if, before pro- 
ceeding to the brief discussion proposed in this paper, I 
cite some expressions coming from two of those who have 
been most actively and responsibly connected with the 



UNIVERSITY EDUCATION. 11 

work of either introducing or developing University meth- 
ods and ideals in this country. These expressions respect, 
as will be seen, the relation of Universities and University 
education to the formation of character, to politics, relig- 
ion, and civilization, as well as the more specific questions 
regarding the particular forms and methods of University 
work. 

President Elliott, of Harvard University, said, in a 
public address : "It would be a fearful portent if thorough 
study of nature and man in all his attributes and works, 
such as befits a University, led scholars to impiety. But 
it does not; on the contrary, such study fills men with hu- 
mility and awe, by bringing them on every hand face to 
face with inscrutable mystery and infinite power. The 
whole work of a University is uplifting, refining and spir- 
itualizing; it embraces 

' Whatsoever touches life 
With upward impulse ; be He nowhere else, 
God is in all that liberates and lifts ; 
In all that humbles, sweetens and consoles.' " 
From the public utterances of President Gilman the 
following extracts may be made: "The object of the Uni- 
versity is to develop character — to make men. It misses 
its aim if it produces learned pedants, or simple artisans, 
or cunning sophists, or pretentious practitioners. Its pur- 
port is not so much to impart knowledge to the pupils, as 
to whet the appetite, exhibit methods, develop powers, 
strengthen judgment, and invigorate the intellectual and 
moral forces. It should prepare for the service of society 
a class of students who will be wise, thoughtful, progres- 
sive guides in whatever department of work or thought they 
may be engagecf." " The University is a place for the ad- 
vanced special education of youth who have been prepared 
for its freedom by the discipline of a lower school. Its 



12 UNIVERSITY EDUCATION. 

form varies in different countries. . . . But while forms and 
methods vary, the freedom to investigate, the obligation 
to teach, and the careful bestowal of academic honors are 
always understood to be among the University functions. 
The pupils are supposed to be wise enough to select, and 
mature enough to follow the courses they pursue." 

To the foregoing extracts, from men of our own time 
and country, I add also the following, coming from the other 
hemisphere, and of earlier date. F. A. Staubenmaier, 
formerly Professor in the University of Freiburg, in 
his work on " Universities and the Organism of the Uni- 
versity Sciences," * calls attention to the profoundly relig- 
ious spirit in which the Universities were founded. Our 
ancestors, he declares, in establishing the " High Schools 
or Universities," professed " to be acting, not of their own 
motion and in their own name, but rather as instruments 
of the divine Spirit that controlled them, and consequently 
in the name of God. Hence they termed the Universities 
' workshops of the Spirit of God,' and this in view as well 
of their origin as of their destination." The sphere of the 
University, he declares, is " none other than that of human 
intelligence itself," and " the sphere in which human in- 
telligence moves is the infinite sphere of truth itself." 
Universities are concerned with the cultivation, '' not of 
an isolated portion of truth, but of truth itself in all its 
extent ; nor with the development of a particular side of 
the human spirit, but of this spirit in its entirety, or con- 
sidered in the unity and totality of its developments." "A 
University is nothing other than the spirit of an epoch 
raised to its highest potency. It is the intellectual reflex 
of the life of humanity, considered with reference to the 
function of cognition. It is the faithful mirror, in which 

*De8 Universites et de Torganisme des Sciences universitalres, etc. 
Translated [into French] from the German by N. J. Schwartz. Li6ge, 1835. 



UNIVERSITY EDUCATION. 13 

man entire — or, humanity — views himself in his true na- 
ture and his veritable life. In other words, in a University 
the spirit of man has not only the consciousness, but also 
the science, of all the relations assigned to it for time and 
eternity." Open alike to all, whether rich or poor, high 
or low, without distinction of persons, the Universities 
could only be the " product of the Christian spirit," which 
emancipated intelligence by removing the obstacles that 
the ancient world had placed in its way and bursting the 
fetters in which it had been bound. 

Finally, Dr. 0. Hoefler, in his address on "The Philo- 
sophical Faculty," * says : " This constitutes a University 
what it is, namely, that in it no part [no special science] 
can dispense with its connection with the rest, or the whole; 
different parts, or sciences, are connected with, and thus 
dependent on, each other, either through their content or 
their method, and all through their inclusion in that higher 
unity, in the knowledge and comprehension of which true 
science consists." In like spirit with Staudenmaier, 
Hoefler regards the University as specifically that one 
among the institutions organized for the purposes of human 
education, in which man is to be brought to the full and 
final knowledge of himself and from which, consequently, 
men are to be sent forth with the best i3reparation for the 
direction and management of characteristically human 
affairs, whether in Church, in State, or in any other of the 
relations of human life. A University is held by our au- 
thor to be, not merely a '' scientific institution," but — and 
this more essentially than any other educational institute 
— an" ethico-scienti^G " one. 

Comparing these utterances, coming, on the one hand, 
from some of those who are now taking the initiative in 

* Die philosophische Facultat, ihre Stellung zur Wissenschaft and zum. 
Staate. Eine Rede. Prag, 1857. 



14 UNIVERSITY EDUCATION. 

the development of University education among us, and, 
on the other, from men standing, as it were, in the midst 
of that old-world stream of University life and work which 
has flowed on continuously since the time of its early orig- 
ination, we observe a general agreement. All unite in 
ascribing to the true University an ethically uplifting, a 
" spiritualizing," character. All are at one in the senti- 
ment expressed in these golden words : " The object of the 
University is to develop character — to make men." Both 
the German and the American intrepreter, again, connect 
with the University the notion of a freedom of intelligence, 
the one ascribing its origin to a spiritual power that unfet- 
tered the intelligence of man, and the other finding it to 
be an essential note of the University that there is per- 
mitted and exercised in it a freedom, for which prior dis- 
cipline is requisite. And if the American opinion lays 
more conspicuous stress on the specialized character of the 
knowledge to be sought at a University, while the German 
emphasizes more its universal character, a little reflective 
consideration may convince one that the difference is more 
one of inflection, (so to speak,) than of essential thought 
or intention. In this connection I would add, that the 
like may be true respecting the two opinions cited and set 
in contrast at the very beginning of this paper. Certainly, 
an institution organized so as to enable " any person " to 
" find instruction in any study " would, at least, not exclude 
provision for that study, the object of which is intelligence 
and its objects on their universal side and in their univer- 
sal relations, or the bringing of all sciences " within the 
compass of a single survey." And I may add that, as a 
matter of fact, the guiding powers of the tjniversity, from 
the words of whose founder my first citation was taken, 
not only practically understand them in the sense sug- 
gested,but are also proceeding not without a healthy ap- 



UNIVEKSITY EDUCATION. 15 

preciation of the truth that " any study " ideally and really 
implies all study ^ or that the spring and life of the special, 
and the indespensable condition of its educating power, 
are in the concrete universal^ to an appropriate study of 
which, accordingly, every University student is to be en- 
couraged. And Plato's idea of universal or comprehensive 
intelligence expressly presupposes, as is seen, the previous 
or accompanying knowledge of many sciences. 

In view of this so general agreement among thought- 
ful men, in responsible positions, respecting the true char- 
acter and functions of a University, why do I venture to 
offer an additional word on the subject? It is, I repeat, 
because there is one phase of it, which, owing largely, or 
solely, to special local conditions, needs, in my judgment, 
especially to be emphasized and developed. I aJlude to 
the question regarding the distinct place and function of 
philosophy in the University. On this question, in its 
practical bearings, we are, I think, on this side of the ocean, 
less clear than regarding the other one, respecting the right 
and place of all the special sciences in the University's 
domain. The healthy tendency of the American mind 
toward the definite and the (supposed) " concrete," (in 
opposition to the supposed " barren abstractions of philos- 
ophy,) and the practical exigencies of our growing national 
life, have been the united occasion of the far more rapid 
development among us of special, than of general knowl- 
edge. In special and technical sciences, America may 
fairly be said to have rendered, or be rendering, herself 
illustrious. In philosophy — which is the coordination of 
all knowledge, the science of science itself, the compre- 
hension, by intelligence, of its own nature and of its uni- 
versal relations, with the accompanying power to give to 
nature her universal interpretation and to define for 
human life and activity their supreme ideals, whether in 



16 UNIVERSITY EDUCATION. 

society, in politics, in the world-life of humanity, in art, 
or in religion — one may say, without excessive exaggera- 
tion, that scarcely a beginning has been made. Now, while 
one of our most esteemed American writers of fiction has 
recently s^id, that " we are misled most of all by success, 
which seems the test of merit, but is never given as a re- 
ward ; it is only the most inscrutable of the dispensations 
of Providence," yet I think few of us will be diverted by 
this coruscation of epigrammatic wit from pinning much 
of our faith to the more vulgar adage, that "nothing 
succeeds like success." A healthy instinct, which pro- 
founder knowledge confirms, assures us that, independently 
of all questions of " merit" and "reward," success is not 
only the law of nature's operations — science is showing us 
that the universe is a growing success — but also of human 
intelligence, when applied seriously, perseveringly, and 
without bias to the cognition and interpretation of reality. 
On the like basis is founded our reasonable assurance that 
the test of real success in the afi'airs of intelligence is to 
be found in its fruits, or in the accession it bi^ngs to man 
of power over nature and over himself. Under these cir- 
cumstances it is no wonder if the men of our generation 
in our own land, dazzled by the successes of the special 
sciences, and unable to discover any corresponding or equal 
fruits of philosophical inquiry, are often inclined to look 
upon the latter with an indifi"erent or, even, an unfriendly 
eye. Such persons are likely to think that any success 
that may have ever, in any place, accompanied the culti- 
vation of philosophy, must have been ephemeral and su- 
perficial — a profitless success of mere words, of hair-split- 
tings, and the like. Fruitful success, they may say, is the 
test of reality, of importance, of truth. Before claiming 
a place, and, especially, an all-important place, in the 
scheme of a great University's life and work, let philosophy 



UNIVERSITY EDUCATION. 17 

first demonstrate its right to do so, by showing, according 
to the above-mentioned test, that it really exists, as a sta- 
ble, important, and fruit-bearing science. 

I have thus forcibly stated the grounds of possible hes- 
itation concerning, or even positive objection to, the em- 
phatic recognition of philosophy in the organization of the 
work of our rising Universities, because I am thoroughly 
in sympathy with the principles involved in them. Unless 
philosophy can claim and hold her place by a right of the 
kind above described, her only dignified and reasonable 
course must be to remain silent. Her praises will never 
be rightly and effectively sung, until, like the praises of 
the special sciences, they are sung by others than adepts. 
Unless the lesson of her worth is, in a sense, known and 
read of all men, she will make but a sorry appearance in 
proclaining it herself. In spite of all this, nay, really in 
consequence of it, I am prepared to urge the indispensa- 
bleness of philosophic culture as an element in University 
education. 

However, I become conscious, on reflection, that in the 
foregoing I have in part been tending toward over-state- 
ment. The indispensableness of philosophic culture, and 
all that this implies, as an element in University education, 
does not really need to be so much urged, as explained. 
There are few among those, whose life and work bring 
them into close practical connection with the problems of 
the higher education, who would meet the claim of philos- 
ophy for that place in a University that really belongs to 
it, with such an unqualified challenge as that above sup- 
posed. It can not be comx)lained that the stream of Uni- 
versity development, at some of our older educational 
centres, has been directed into so narrow a channel, that 
philosophy has been washed ashore. On the contrary, the 
development of technically philosophical instruction and 



18 UNIVERSITY EDUCATION. 

the growth of the philosophic spirit have gone hand in 
hand with, or have followed closely after, the rapid expan- 
sion and elevation of other branches of University educa- 
tion.* And at other centres, of more recent origin, or yet 
to be created, philosophy has no need to fear that she will 
be rudely received. The American sense of " fair play," 
if nothing else, would protect her in her natural rights. 
Besides, the American mind has already given evidence of 
qualities that, in my judgment, peculiarly endow it for the 
creative dexelopraent, as well as the responsive reception, 
of philosophic truth. Its very tendency, above mentioned, 
toward the definite, experimental, and concrete, will serve 
— are already serving — to keep it, when occupied with 
philosophical problems, from entertaining hospitably those 
unfruitful, uninstructive abstractions, which have consti- 
tuted so large a portion of the currency of philosophy 
among our English-speaking ancestors and contemporaries. 
That there is at the present time a positive drawing of the 
American mind toward philosophic study and reflection, 
is made evident by many phenomena, conspicuous to an 
observing eye. Abundant reason why this should be so is 
found — apart from any thing that may be peculiar in the 
present stage of our national development — in the fact 
that the American nation is a child of ideas. Religious 
and political ideas, and ideals, cradled our nation in its in- 
fancy, and have been the spring and the strength of all its 
growing life. In no country is character more honored 
than among us. And nowhere, in spite of all our moral 
shortcomings, is there a stronger sense of responsibility for 
the subordination of all things — all victories of science, all 
conquests of material power, all the relations, all the 
adornments, of life — to the service of truth, goodness and 

* See Appendix. 



UNIVEKSITY EDUCATION. 19 

beauty ; and truth, goodness, and beauty are the deposit, 
incarnate in nature, and proposed, through nature and 
through the nature of man and of his intelligence, to man 
as the supreme norm and ideal of his conscious and volun- 
tary activity, that it is the highest function of philosophy 
to comprehend and interpret. 

The ultimate end of human education is, unquestion- 
ably, human wholeness, completeness, perfection. The 
attainment of this end is human self-mastery, and self- 
mastery is steadfast liberty. Human self-realization is the 
realization of a not merely formal but substantial freedom ; 
or, of a freedom that is not simply negative, consisting in 
the absence of unwelcome interference with one's powers 
of thought and and action, but positive, and regulated — 
self- regulated — by a fixed principle within. It is not de- 
liverance from control, but the positive establishment of a 
steady and successful self-control. Now, human nature, in a 
very obvious sense, is a decidedly mixed and varying value. 
A thousand diiferent springs, of feeling, appetency, desire, 
volition, are centred in it, and in diverse proportions in 
different individuals. It is this diversity of proportion 
that gives to individuality its specific and diff'erentiating 
color. The end of education can not be to efii"ace this color. 
Its object is not to introduce a colorless uniformity among 
men. But the theory of education proceeds on the hy- 
pothesis that the common end of all men is self-mastering 
freedom, and that the realization of the latter is condi- 
tioned on intelligence. The freedom of man is a ''freedom 
through the truth" — the only complete freedom that is 
thinkable. In proportion as men attain to this freedom, 
they are indeed " of one mind," but this " one mind " con- 
tinues to be reflected in their individual experiences, dis- 
positions, and characters with hues indefinitely more mul- 
tiform than those of the rainbow. 



20 UNIVERSITY EDUCATION. 

The University, in the order or institutions establishecl 
for human education, is the one devoted to the fullest and 
freest cultivation of this universal condition of human 
freedom. It is devoted to the fullest and freest cultivation 
of universal intelligence, or to the quest and ^pcognition 
of any and all truth, and this for the sake of truth alone, 
and of the freedom which is through the truth. With 
what reason its intrinsic or immanent end can be said to 
be " to develop character — to make men," is obvious. 

But the University, as we have seen, is the place 
where a great variety of so-called " special sciences " — a 
variety constantly and rapidly increasing — have their 
natural and rightful home. The " special " character of 
these sciences is founded on the fact that in each of them 
inquiry is primarily directed only to some particular phase 
or department of the whole realm of possible objects of 
knowledge. Attention is abstracted from all but a special 
and definitely restricted order of facts, phenomena, or re- 
lations, to the analytic comprehension of which the in- 
telligence of the inquirer is particularly directed. The 
prime object here is not the knowledge of all truth, but of 
a portion of truth. It is not the development of universal, 
but of special intelligence. Besides, each one of these 
sciences subserves some special practical end of human 
existence, other, apparently, than the universal one of de- 
veloping character or enabling the adept in it to be 
simply true to himself and to the nature of man. The 
student who approaches the special study of it is presumed 
to have this special end particularly in mind. He chooses 
his study with reference to its prospective practical bear- 
ing on the accomplishment of some particular personal 
ambition or end in life. 

How, now, is the cultivation of special sciences to be 
connected with, and made subsidiary to, the universal, 



UNIVERSITY EDUCATION. 21 

humane, ethical end of all education ? For it is perfectly- 
plain that this connection will not necessarily establish 
itself spontaneously, as it were, and of its own accord. The 
special sciences may be, for they often are, cultivated with- 
out any express reference to the end mentioned, and when 
they are thus cultivated it depends on nothing better than 
accident whether their bearing on this end shall be merely 
negative or positively perverting. 

Now, I assert that if the special sciences are to be cul- 
tivated purely as such, with reference, I mean, only to 
themselves and to the particular ends or applications 
which they may subserve, the right place for them is not 
in a University, but in special technical or professional 
schools, or in colleges in which various " studies " are 
grouped together in a loose aggregate, on no higher prin- 
ciple than that of immediate convenience, and without 
any pretence of realizing the catholic idea which is fun- 
damental for the University, the idea of the unity of all 
truth. Only thus can such cultivation of these sciences be 
carried on without false pretence and the ethical perils 
consequent thereon. For, the University idea is this of 
the essential unity of all truth and the inclusion, as Hoef- 
ler has expressed it for us, of all sciences " in that higher 
unity, in the knowledge and comprehension of which true 
science consists." And the unity of all truth is the fun- 
damental idea of philosophy. The conception of the Uni- 
versity is a specifically philosophical one. All sciences 
have their place in the University because they really bear 
out this conception, for which reason also the Uliiversity 
is their only true and perfect home. And it is through 
the active, virile comprehension and exhibition of all 
sciences in this their relation to the unity of all truth that 
not only true mastery of them is demonstrated, but that 
they acquire their true educational value. 



22 UNIVEKSITY EDUCATION. 

It is often cradely said of the special sciences — as if 
this' were their peculiar and proudest distinction — that 
they are concerned with " facts." This distinction is not 
peculiar to these sciences, as contrasted with universal, or 
philosophic, science. But to be concerned only with facts 
is a source, not of scientific strength, but of weakness. In- 
deed, thought occupied with pure fact, were this possible, 
would not take the first step toward scientific intelligence, 
comprehension, or real knowledge. It is an old story that 
facts, taken by themselves, are " brute." To get at them 
in their (imagined) purity, you must isolate them, and 
contemplate them in their isolation. But the more you 
isolate them, the more completely do you cut yourself off 
from the possibility of comprehending them. It is not the 
mere apprehension of facts, but the perception of them in 
their relations, that constitutes science. It is only in their 
relations that facts are intelligible. Now, it is the un- 
doubted tendency of special science, as such, to exalt fact 
and to neglect relation, or, in the technical language sanc- 
tioned by philosophy, to regard more the "particular" 
than the " universal." This is a tendency, and a danger, 
that results from one of the fundamental necessities of 
special science, the necessity of a division of labor, of 
restricting the field of individual inquiry, in order to the 
attainment of the greatest possible " precision of knowl- 
edge." How real and great this danger is, is forcibly ex- 
pressed in the following recent utterance of Professor 
Huxley's: "The man who works away at one corner of na- 
ture, shutting his eyes to all the rest, diminishes his 
chances of seeing what is to be seen in that corner; for," 
he adds, " as I need hardly remind my present hearers, 
that which the investigator perceives depends much more 
on that which lies behind his sense organs than on the ob- 
ject in front of them " The exactest apprehension and 



UNIVERSITY EDUCATION. , 23 

most careful tabulation of any number of facts does not of 
itself constitute science. The memory charged with all 
the contents of an encyclopaedia is a certain preparation 
for comprehending intelligence, but can not take its place. 
The complete scientific identity of any the least fact is not 
established by mere cognizance of the fact, but by the 
comprehension of its relations. And the lines of its rela- 
tions run out into all the ends of the universe. " Tota in 
minimis existit natural You may, as an investigator, 
make it your special task to investigate nutshells ; but you 
will never arrive at the end of your work till you find and 
recognize " tota natura " in a nutshell. This is one of the 
truths implied in the words quoted from Professsor Hux- 
ley. It is the truth of the unity of nature — the compre- 
hension of all "facts" in one whole, in each of which facts 
the nature of the whole is present and revealed in a specific 
form. 

The science which has to do with wholes, especially, 
is philosophy. Philosophy is the science of totality, and, 
ultimately, of the totality of existence, and this, of course, 
not in (a really impossible, but oft-essayed) abstraction 
from the parts, members, or particular " facts " that con- 
stitute it, but in vital unity and organic identity with 
them. It is the science of principles, and, ultimately, of 
the universal principle, in the like vital and concrete re- 
lation to the varied facts of known reality. And so it is, 
in aim and tendency, and, I think, in substantial achieve- 
ment, the science of absolute, or of the universal, reality, 
viewed as the power and substance of the whole realm of 
" phenomena." 

It follows from the foregoing that, so far from a schism 
existing by nature between the special sciences and phil- 
osophy, the former naturally tend toward, seek, and de- 
mand the latter for their own completion and perfection, 



24. UNIVERSITY EDUCATION. 

while the latter requires the former as the material, out of 
which, so to speak, its own body is to be constituted. And 
so it is, that the greatest and most successful efforts at 
philosophic comprehension have always followed upon and 
grown out from the more or less vigorous and successful 
prosecution, during a considerable portion of time, of 
special and " exact " inquiry. The greatest men of special 
science have been, and are, among the first to recognize 
the need of philosophic science. And, on the other hand, 
the greatest philosophers, the Platos and Aristotles, the 
Leibnitzes and Hegels, (and I am willing to leave a blank, 
to be filled up by the ''courteous reader" with the name 
of any British philosopher whom he may think deserving 
of mention) have been those whose knowledge of the 
special facts of nature, man, and history could fairly be 
termed encyclopaedic. The particular and the universal, 
not simply repel, they also, and even more irresistibly, 
solicit each other. 

Thus any study ideally and really implies all study, 
some science all science, and partial intelligence com- 
pleted intelligence. Totalit}^ of view, unity in multipli- 
city, the essential — but not abstract, or numerical — one- 
ness of the manifold — this is presupposed in all knowledge. 
The consequence is that he who has taken some steps in 
the path of such knowledge is moved by the very law and 
the inherent impulsp of intelligence to generalize, to uni-, 
versalize, and by an " anticipation of nature " to form and 
entertain a conception of the totality of nature or of real 
existence, on the basis and after the analogy of that which 
he already sees. If the anticipation is premature, not being 
under the strict control of scientific intelligence, the result 
will be a one-sided and superficial conception or '' philoso- 
phy " of nature and all reality, having only the value of a 
fractional truth, and sure, in its consequences, to bear all 



UNIVERSITY EDUCATION. 25 

the character of a falsehood. Such half-truths, or fragmen- 
tary conceptions, are the purely " physical," materialistic, 
mathematical, and mechanical views, or " philosophies," 
of all existence. To protect students against such crudi- 
ties should be one of the functions of University instruc- 
tors. And this is to be done, and can effectually be done, 
not by discouraging the philosophic tendency, not by 
placing all comprehensive views under a ban, but by en- 
couraging them to the utmost and at the same time show- 
ing, or allowing to be shown, what the truly comprehen- 
sive and total views are, and how they are to be reached. 

The method of the special and " exact " sciences pre- 
vents their adepts, as such^ (that is, so long as they 
rigidly confine themselves to the limitations of what is 
termed the ••• scientific " method) from carrying these 
sciences forward into the sanctuary of philosophic inter- 
pretation and so rendering them ideally complete. This 
method is abstract, formal, and (the term is to be under- 
stood in no invidious sense) superficial. It abstracts, in 
considering the relations of phenomena, from all but the 
relations of space and time, of co-existence and sequence.* 
These relations belong, or are held to belong, only to the 
"form," and not to the essence or substance, of phenom- 
ena. In this sense they are superficial, or lie on the sur- 
face of things^ are external to them, mechanical, mathe- 
matical. So the modern sciences seek methodically to ef- 
fectuate a provisional divorce between appearance (under 
the more dignified name of " phenomenon ") and ultimate 
reality, or between the partial, and apparent or approxi- 



*" The business of science is simply to ascertain in what manner phen- 
omena co-exist with each other or follow each other, and the only kind of ex- 
planation with which it can properly deal is that which refers one set of 
phenomena to another set." (John Fiske, The Idea of God, etc., pp. 101-102.) 
The foregoing is one of the common-places of the logic of modern " science." 



26 UNIVERSITY EDUCATION. 

mate truth of sensible fact and the essential and whole 
truth as it would appear to complete knowledge. They 
abstract, in fact or in tendency, from quality, so as to regard 
only quantity, i. e., quantitative relations.* So they become 
exact, after the ideal of mathematical exactitude, but at 
the expense of being abstract and one-sided. 

That which thus constitutes the strength and the merit 
of the sciences, considered in their special and exact char- 
acter, marks their limitation and defect, from the point of 
view of complete intelligence, or philosophy. The rela- 
tions, which are the immanent soul and life of phenomena 
and the inner ground of their final explanation and com- 
prehension, are more than relations of co-existence and 
sequence. The world is more than one immense and com- 
plex case of the quantitative '• re-distribution of matter 
and motion." The diiferences among things — between 
the so-called inorganic, for example, and the organic, or 
the natural and the moral — are more than differences of 
quantitative distribution. That this is so, and that the 
ground of the complete explanation of all phenomena — 
that, the knowledge of which would simply be the knowl- 
edge of the phenomena themselves in their full value and 
significance — is to be found, if found at all, in an order of 
relations, by which all quantitative relations are them- 
selves conditioned, all men, instinctively and practically, 
if not explicitly and theoretically, recognize. The con- 
spicuous leaders of British thinking, the Lockes, Humes, 
Mills, and Spencers, have recognized this. But, the limi- 
tations of the modern scientific method having, in one way 
or another, become to their intelligence as a second nature, 
it has been impossible for them in their treatment of phil- 



*" This which we call exact science is in reality quantitative prevision.'' 
Science may be " considered as the development of qualitative prevision into 
quantitative prevision." (Spencer, P&ychology, Vol.1, pp. 339-340.) 



UNIVERSITY EDUCATION. 27 

osophic questions, to go beyond them. The interior truth 
of nature and of all existence has remained to them a con- 
fessedly insoluble problem. And their " philosophy " has 
consisted in the emphatic assertion — it could scarcelj^ be 
said to have even simulated the form of a demonstration 
— that the problem was insoluble for all and every human 
intelligence. And the result has been the familiar nom- 
inalism, scepticism, subjective idealism, phenomenalism, 
agnosticism — to mention the diiferent names, under which, 
alternately, one and the same spectre of philosophical 
negativism has been paraded — of some of England's "sober 
thinkers." 

It were a theme worthy, for its instructiveness, of a 
separate and exhaustive treatment, to trace the connec- 
tion between the nominalistic negativism of the national 
philosophy — the seeds of which appear away back in the 
middle ages — and the early decay and persistently sus- 
pended animation of the English University. The connec- 
tion is assuredly not accidental. The national intelligence? 
in the sphere of theoretic knowledge, having thus willfully 
and avowedly abdicated its highest function, the Univer- 
sity, according to the conception of it which we have 
above had before us, was not only without reason for 
existing, but unable to exist and be maintained, otherwise 
than in name. For the University is, as it were, the ex- 
ternal sign and embodiment of that unity of all science, of 
which philosophy is the conscious, inward substance. 
Without positive philosophic science, held in the firm 
grasp of clear and reasoned knowledge and with mascu- 
line conviction, the University becomes a mere sign with- 
out signification, a dead body whose scattered members 
are no longer held together by the power of a single life. 
It becomes only a name^ bearing out, thus far, that spectral 
theory of nominalism which is the sorry fruit of philo- 



28 UNIVEKSITY EDUCATION. 

sophical atony. The connection between the sciences be- 
ing lost, or, rather, not having been once grasped, they 
may be, and are, cnltivated in the current " exact," but 
ideally incomplete, way, apart from the common centre of 
a University, and the problem, how to derive from them 
their true educational value, remains unsolved. They can 
be prosecuted and studied from motives of curiosity, or for 
the sake of prospective material advantage, or even with 
the higher and purer motive of the special investigator' 
but their ethical quality, their relation to the development 
of spiritual perfection in man, is unapparent. 

The knowledge of nature has its distinct and priceless 
importance for the supreme ends of human education, be- 
cause nature, like man, is a spiritual value. Such phrases 
as, " The communion of man with nature," " The reaction 
of natural conditions on the character of human life," and 
the like, are not mere phrases without objective meaning 
(like "Jack and the Bean-stalk "), but the expression of 
truths of high significance, just because of the real spiri- 
tual kinship of man and nature. It is in this kinship that 
the unity of man and nature resides, as it is also on it that 
the unity of science is founded. Philosophy is the scien- 
tific comprehension of this spiritual unity, in itself, in its 
conditions, in its implications. It is by virtue of this its 
spiritual character that all existence has ultimately, for 
human knowledge, a dynamic quality, at once real and 
ideal — nay, real, just because it is ideal, and ideal, be- 
cause real. It is in this that all things "consent together," 
so that, in spite of their specific and individual diff"erences, 
they are yet one, and so that each smallest existence, in 
the remotest corner of nature, when not merely " seen," 
but hiown^ becomes a " mirror of the whole universe." It 
is the instinct of this spiritual unity that is the real motive 
power of all discovery of the laws of nature. This instinct, 



UNIVERSITY EDUCATION. 29 

to Professor Tyndall, is the " scientific imagination," com- 
parable to a " lamp, which indeed does not burn and give 
any light till it has been lighted by the wick of observation 
and experiment. But the light which subsequently 
streams forth may, in consequence of the mind's own 
power, exceed a million times the original light of the 
wick. Indeed, we may say that the two lights are incom- 
mensurable: a few apparently unimportant and isolated 
facts may sutfice, through their effect on the mind, for the 
development of principles, the range of whose application 
is incalculable."* To Professor Stuart, of Cambridge, it 
is the " electric spark of genius," which " calls together " 
that "mere valley of dry bones," to which he likens even 
the best-tabulated " facts " and " makes a living body of 
them."f And it is this that "-lies behind the sense organs " 
of the investigator, and on which, according to Professor 
Huxley, " that which the investigator perceives depends 
much more than on the subject in front of them.";): This 
instinct, this divining power of the mind, which enables 
the investigator at the beginning of his labor to put to na.- 
ture the'"' prude)is quaestio^^ which, is '"' soientiae dlmid- 
ium^'' is apt, if recognized at all by the ordinary man of 
science, to be treated by him simply as something " mys- 
terious." It is a convenient faculty of " subjective 
thought," an exclusive property or instrument of the 
thinking inquirer, indispensable indeed for his progress, 
but without any objective correlate in nature. It is a pri- 
vate and exceptional means of investigation, to be applied 
externally in scientifically manipulating the j)henomena 

* From. Professor Tyndall's Lectures on Light, cited in a German work, 
from wliicli the above is a re-translation. 

iJ. Stuart, A Cliapter of Science ; or, What is a Law of Nature ? Lon- 
don, p. 22. - 

X See above, p. 22. 



30 UNIVERSITY EDUCATION. 

that nature presents to observation, but to which nothing 
verifiably corresponds in nature herself. For nothing, by 
the abstract, partial, and arbitrary methods of modern 
" exact science," is capable of being objectively verified, 
except bare co-existences and sequences, abstract identi- 
ties and differences, equalities and inequalities, consid- 
ered as emptied of all ideality, thought, or dynamic life, 
and as mere abstract facts of existence. 

But it so happens that now, when the " drift toward 
Universities " has fairly and finally set in among us, the 
sense, conscious or blind, of all that is arbitrary, unnatural, 
and strained in the state of things just described is being 
developed by the very growth of the sciences themselves. 
If the development of the doctrine of mechanical evolu- 
tion has marked a growing, healthful, and necessary ten- 
dency of mtidern science toward the recognition of the at 
least formal and mathematical unity of all the sciences, it 
could at no time but be evident to a really philosoi3hical 
judgment that the period must rapidly follow, when the 
need would be felt of going further and recognizing their 
substantial unity through their common relation to the or- 
ganic thought that is immanent in all natural existence. 
That this need is already felt, there is no lack of signs.* 
And it will be met, if met at all, by the establishment — 
or, rather, by the re-habilitation, development, and per- 
fecting — of the philosophy of nature, in which it will be 
shown that to thought subjective, or " within the mind," 
answers thought objective, or incarnate in nature; that 
the sufaciency of the former to fathom, with any degree of 
success, the latter arises from the fact that both are organ- 
ically one (man the head of nature, and nature, tc use a 



*One of the most interesting of these is John Fiske's The Idea of God as 
affected by Modern Knowledge, which has come into my hands during the 
preparation of the foregoing pages. 



UNIVEKSITY EDUCATION. 31 

borrowed figure, becoming "conscious of itself in man "); 
and that both constitute a growing revelation of the abso- 
lute tnought of the Perfect, the Divine Being, who is the 
immanent spring of all their life, and the transcendent 
goal of all their separate and joint labor. 

Thus I have sought just to intimate how, and with 
what result, the final, substantial unity of the " detached 
sciences'' of nature is found in the philosophy of nature, 
and in this alone. And I have treated of this order of 
studies at such length for the reason that they absorb, in 
these days, so large a portion of the interest and attention 
of inquiring minds. But what I have thus argued, or 
urged, applies with undiminished force to every order «f 
study and investigation. 

The upshot of my argument is that, in a University, 
every student of a special science of nature should be- 
come conscious of the universal science of nature, and 
should not cease from his labors until, in addition to a 
masterly proficiency in following and pursuing the lines of 
his special investigation, he has something of a really cul- 
tivated and virile intelligence respecting the spiritual sig- 
nificance of the whole Cosmos, in which he is placed, of 
which he is an organic member, and of which the subject 
of his special investigation is but one aspect abstracted 
from the whole. In like manner, every student of partic- 
ular historic events should be trained, or should train him- 
self, to comprehend the universal logic of events, as an 
immanent law of spiritual progress, having God, man, and 
nature for its organic factors. In other words, beside 
knowing the facts of history, as determined by detailed 
investigation, he should also know their comprehensive 
relations and, therein, their largest ascertainable signifi- 
cance, as exhibited in the x)hilosophy of history. Need I 
add that the "philological student," to the greatest possi- 



32 UNIVERSITY EDUCATION. 

ble knowledge of the phenomena of language and litera- 
ture — grammatical and rhetorical forms — must add the 
comprehension of that thought which is their animat- 
ing soul and substance? Well may he take to heart the 
words of Schelling : " It is a misuse of terms to call the 
mere grammarian \^Sprachgelehrte^ a philologist. In 
the philologist the artist and the philosopher are united. 
His work is the historic interpretation of the works of art 
and intelligence." So, too, the student of human laws, of 
social relations, of political economies, should not stop 
short of appreciating, in the investigation of lawSy the uni- 
versal nature of law, in the study of social relations, the 
universal, ethical character of these relations as founded 
in the spiritual nature of man, and in the examination of 
economies (whether actual or theoretical), the instrumen- 
tal relation of all economies to the ethical ends and 
grounds of social existence. The student of religions 
should know the philosophy of religion. And is it too 
much to suggest, that the student of medicine should aim, 
not simply at knowing the empirical laws of disease and 
cure, but also at comprehending, through the philosophy 
of nature, the philosophy of cure? 

I contend that, in addition to the most exact and most 
copious practicable information regarding the special facts 
and empirical laws of his particular studies, the Univer- 
sity student should be held to the necessity of developing 
a distinct consciousness of the universal nature of that 
whole, thought-conditioned world of human experience, 
to which all facts and laws are related. And it is my no- 
tion that this latter " consciousness " will, in proportion to 
its genuineness, not appear as a mere external and arbi- 
trary addition to the special knowledge, but as growing 
out of it, the latter being simply completed in the former. 
For, according to the results of all really positive pliilo- 



UNIVERSITY EDUCATION. 33 

sopliic science ever since s^^stematic thought began — as 
well as according to all the really concrete facts of human 
experience, when viewed in their wholeness and complete- 
ness — the universal is not simply separate from the par- 
ticular, — in our minds, for example, or in the mind of God, 
— but also immanent in it. The universal is the final 
truth and reality of the particular itself. 

And the results of such union, in the scientific and 
•educating work of the University, of the one and the 
many, the universal and the particular, will be — what? 
First, and negatively, the avoidance of a certain most 
grievous sham, or false pretense, which consists in sending 
forth from the highest sanctuary of human education, with 
the title of " Doctor," or Teacher, of half-educated per- 
sons, presenting to the world, as the ostensible products 
of a liberal education, men, the narrow one-sidedness or 
specialism of whose training reveals itself in that illiber- 
alism which consists in the riding of hobbies, the putting 
of fractional truths of fact in the place of the all-compre- 
hensive truths of life. In this connection I am glad to 
<3ite the words of the recent Rector of Marburg, himself a 
specialist, in his Inaugural Address.* Dr. Schmidt-Rim- 
pler, after illustrating abundantly the dangerous and even 
ridiculous effects of extreme and exclusive specialism, 
urgeji that "in the midst of special studies the inherent 
■connection of all knowledge must not be forgotten. Let 
the hobbies be reserved for the later domestic and private 
use of those who have first learned to ride fn the saddle 
of universal, living science! This is the thing to be 
learned; to provide that it may be, is the first duty of 
Universities. He who proposes to neglect the univer- 



*Universitat und Specialistenthum. Rede gehalten von Dr. Herm. 
Sichmidt-Rimpler, Professor der Medicin, etc., 1881. 

3 



34 UNIVERSITY EDUCATION. 

sal side of knowledge and devote himself at once to a 
thoroughly special subject, does not need the University at 
all. He will do better to enter into apprenticeship under 
some master, it matters not whether his workshop be 
called Hospital, Laboratory, Library, or Study !" 

Secondly, and positively, the result, as I predict, will 
be the realization of the more comprehensive aim of the 
University, which is the development in its members — 
along with symmetrical and catholic culture — of intellec- 
tual and moral self-mastery, and the contril)ution to church 
and state, to science, literature, political life, and religion,, 
of leaders capable of recognizing the true ideals and of in- 
telligently and effectively directing the nation's energies 
to their accomplishment. 

But can this substantial, ethical result be anticipated,, 
under conditions such as those that have been hereinbe- 
fore described ? Can it be expected, without more speci- 
fically ethical and religious study and training^ The last, 
in any well-regulated feast, is "always the best. And 
though I liave not the temerity to liken this discussion to a 
feast, the rule holds good here. I Mo indeed hold, not,^ 
certainly, as a merely personal opinion, but as one of the 
highest truths of science, that the intrinsic condition, and,, 
rightly understood, the extrinsic completion, of all true 
and perfect science is ethical and religious. By ethical 
knowledge I understand the broadest and completest and 
deepest human self-knowledge, and by religious knowledge 
the comprehension of that saying, in which all religion 
and philosophy are summarily expressed, "The Spirit is 
Truth." In the former I conceive the individual as know- 
ing himself, not alone in his i^ersonal peculiarities or in 
his individual diiferences from all other men, but also, and 
much more, in his organic unity with all' existence — with 
nature, with humanity, and, in proportion to his perfec- 



UNIVERSITY EDUCATION. 35 

"tion, with God. In the latter I conceive him as becoming 
^ware of his supreme connection {'■''religio''') with God, 
the absolute and universal Spirit, as the eternal ground of 
the sufficiency of his own thought (2. Corinthians, 3: 5) 
and of his own and all other being, and as the final law 
and goal, of all his self-directing activity. And both of 
these, I repeat, speaking in the name, not only of concrete 
and historic fact, but also, and especially, in the name of 
the demonstrations which philosophic science has accom- 
plished and which it has in the future still further to per- 
fect, are the natural completion of all other knowledge, 
and not a merely external and ideally irrelevant addition 
to them. There is no science whatever, which, taken in 
its ideal wholeness and completeness, is "godless." There 
are, indeed, "sciences" which are abstract and special, and 
whose abstract and special character consists i3recisely in 
the circumstance that in them, provisionally and for spec- 
ial purposes, abstraction is made from the fundamental 
conditions and supreme ends of all science^ and from the 
sphere of "real existence" considered as a whole, while 
attention is methodically confined to a particular sphere 
or aspect of phenomena and to the rules of order that are 
found to hold good among them. But when, abstracting, 
so to speak, from the foregoing arbitrary abstraction, the 
very lines of any special science are followed up to their 
ideal termination in the unity of all sciences, they are 
found to be connected, without a break, with the larger 
ethical and religious knowledge above mentioned. And 
so, in the name and in the form of philosophic science I 
would have special ethical and religious knowledge culti- 
vated in the University for every reason, for the sake of 
the ideal completion and the educating power of all other 
sciences, for their own sake, and for the sake of their im- 
mediate unity with the highest aim of all human educa- 



36 UNIVERSITY EDUCATION. 

tion. And so will the University become in fact a "work- 
shop of the Spirit of God." 

The view taken in this paper implies that, in addition 
to a competent force of special teachers of philosophy^ 
the University should possess in every member of its 
teaching staif a person permeated with the philosophic 
spirit and enlightened by a truly philosophic culture. Can 
such teachers, of philosophy, in particular, and then of 
the varied special sciences, be had ? This is, in a sense, an 
irrelevant question. The main point is, that they must he 
had, if the real University is to exist. And in the midst 
of all our plans and ambitions for the development of the 
University among us, we must have this indispensable con 
dition constantly in mind. My own conviction is that the 
condition will be fulfilled. 



APPENDIX. 



At Harvard College, in the academic year 1860-1861, 
there was a ''Professor of Christian Morals" and a "Pro- 
fessor of Natural Religion, Moral Philosophy, and Civil 
Polity." The courses of instruction were announced as 
follows : 

Religious Instruction (first half of the Freshmen 
year). Whately's Morals and Christian Evidences. 

Logic and Philosophy (Senior year,first term). Bo wen's 
Ethics and Metaphysics. Thomson's Outline of the Laws 
of Thought. Hamilton's Metaphysics. Forensics. 

Philosophy (Senior year, second term). Butler's Ser- 
mons and Analogy. Bowen's Political Economy. Ham- 
ilton's Logic. Forensics. 

Now (1885-1886) there are three full "Professors of 
Philosophy'' and one Assistant Professor of Philosophy at 
Harvard. In addition to the courses of instruction offered 
by them, the "Parkman Professor of Theology" gives two 
courses on religions philosophy and ethics. Political 
Economy, or the "Civil Polity" of 25 years ago, consti- 
tutes now a separate department of instruction, in which 
ten courses are offered, by three instructors. The courses 
in philosophy, according to the catalogue of the current 
year, are now as follows : 

1. History of Philosophy. — Ferrier's Lectures on 
Greek Philosophy. — Outlines of Modern Philosoph3^ — 
Lectures. (Three times a week.) 

2. Psychology and Logic. — Bain's The Senses and 



38 APPENDIX. 

the Intellect. — Jevons's Elementary Lessons in Logic. 
(Three times a week.) 

3. Elementar}^ Philosophy in connection with ethical 
and religions questions. — Royce's Religious Aspects of 
Philosophy. — ^Lectures. (Three times a week.) 

•1. Ethics.— Earlier English Ethics. — Mill's Utilitari- 
anism. — Kant's Theor}^ of Ethics. — Lectures and Theses. 
(Three times a week.) 

5. English Philosoph5^ — Locke. — Berkeley. — Hume. 
(Three times a week.) 

0. Earlier French Philosophy, from Descartes to 
Leibnitz, and German Philosoph}^ from Kant to Hegel. — 
Lectures. (Three times a week.) 

7. German Philosophy of the Present Day.— Scho- 
penhauer's Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung. — ^^Hart- 
mann's Philosophie des Unbewussten. — Lotze's Metaphy- 
sik. (Three times a week. Omitted in 1885-86.) 

13. Modern Discussion of the Philosophy of Nature. 
— Spinoza. — Modern Monism. — Spencer's Theory of Evo- 
lution. (Three times a week.) 

8. Hegel's Phanomenologie. (Once a week. Omit- 
ted in 1885-86.) 

9. Scecial Advanced Study and Experimental Re- 
search in Phychology. (Once a week.) 

10. The Philosoph}^ of Religion. — Lectures. (Once 
a week.) 

11. The Practical Ethics of Modern Society. — Studies 
of Social Reforms, Temperance, Charity, Labor, Prison 
Discipline, Divorce, etc. — Lectures and Essays. (Once a 
week.) 

12. Philosophical Theism, — History of the chief 
philosophical controversies about the Being and Nature of 
God. — Discussions and Theses. (Three times a week, for 
one-lialf year. Omitted in 1885-86.) 



APPENDIX. 39 

The University of Michigan, twenty-five years ago, 
had one teacher of philosophy, who was also the President 
or "Chancellor" of the University — Dr. Tappan, well 
known through his books as an able logician and metaphy- 
sician. According to the Catalogue of that date, he gave 
instruction in "philosophy'' to the students five times a 
week throughout the Senior Year, by means of "Text- 
books and lectures." 

To post-graduate students Chancellor Tappan offered 
the following courses : 

First Semester: History of Philosophy. I. Locke 
and the Developement of the Sensational School. II. 
The System of Kant, and the Developement of the Ger- 
man Speculative School. 

Second Semester: History of Pliilosophy. I. Reid, 
and the Common Sense School. II. Hamilton as the Ex- 
pounder of Reid. III. Cousin, and Eclecticism. 

But the Catalogue does not indicate that there were 
were any post-graduate students at the time when these 
courses were offered. 

At present the University of Michigan has one Pro- 
fessor of Philosophy and one Instructor in Philosophy, 
and the courses in philosophy, as announced in the Calen- 
dar of the present year, are the following : 



FIRST SEMESTER. 

1. Emi^irical Psychology. Murray's Hand-book of 
Psychology. (Three times a week, in two sections.) 

2. Real Logic, or the Principles of Philosophy. 
Lectures. (Three times a week.) 

4. The History of Philosophy: Ancient and Medi- 
aeval. Lectures. (Three times a week.) 

7. Seminary (Plato's Republic.) (Twice a week.) 



40 APPEiilDIX. , 

8. The Philosophy of the State and of History. 
Lectures. (Twice a week.) 

11. Aesthetics; or, the Philosophy of the Beautiful 
in Nature and in the Products of Human Art. Lectures. 
(Twice a week. Omitted in 1885-86.) 

12. Experimental Psychology. Lectures. (Twice a 
Aveek.) 

SECOND SEMESTER. 
3. Formal Logic. Jevons's Lessons in Logic. (Twice 
a week, in three sections.) 

5. The History of Philosophy : Modern. Lectures. 
(Three times a week.) 

6. Ethics, historical and theoretical. Lectures. 
(Twice a week.) 

9. Seminary. Hegel's Logic. (Twice a week.) 

10. The Philosophy of Herbert Spencer. Lectures. 
(Twice a Aveek.) 

13. Speculative Psychology. Lectures. (Twice a 
week.) 

14. Seminary. Aristotle's Ethics. (Twice a Aveek.) 
Here, too, as at Har\^ard, political economy and cog- 
nate subjects, once falling within the province of the pro- 
fessor of philosophy, are now represented by a distinct 
corps of instructors. 



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